Thursday, February 7, 2013

Frappe

A Bowl Full of Frappe

Frappe, Chiacchiere, Cenci. These special treats appear at the beginning of February in just about every Italian region during the Carnevale. In Rome, we call them Frappe, in other regions you will find them also as Chiacchiere, Cenci, Sfrappole, Sprelle, Fiocchetti, Lattughe, and so on. The Carnevale is a festival celebrated with parades, masquerade balls, entertainment, music, and parties. It goes on for days! There’s some sort of complicated calculation to figure out when the Carnevale starts, Easter Sunday has something to do with it. I think you need to count 47 days prior to Easter and that is when the Carnevale starts. My way of figuring it out, is when I notice that the Frappe are everywhere I go, from a coffee shop to a supermarket. Food always answers my questions, I’m better in eating than doing the math, usually I go by the scent. And even if I personally don’t celebrate the season by going to masquerade balls, I do make sure to have my gastronomic divertissment.Frappes can be deep fried or baked in the oven, either way you will find them delicious. Their fragrance is delicate and invading at the same time, they are light and friable, you can hardly feel them in your hands. What makes them so delicious, other than the flavor of course, is their crispness, when you bite into them you can actually hear a brittle crack. This is also the sign that they have been well prepared.Lightly dust them with confectioner sugar, eat them simple, add a creamy mascarpone sauce, dip them in chocolate or just eat them while you are frying away. I made them, put them in a bowl, left them on the counter and after 30 minutes they were gone. I’m still trying to figure the math for this one, but my scent and sense says they were good.

Ingredients

300g flour

2 eggs

60g sugar

pinch of salt

1 lemon zest

2 tbsp of butter

1 tbsp of grappa

(or white wine or brandy)

oil for frying

confectioners sugar

Incorporate all ingredients and knead until the dough is smooth. Cover the dough with a plastic wrap and leave it to rest for 1 hour. Roll out the dough, circa 3mm thin. With a serrated pastry wheel, cut into rectangular pieces, roughly the size of a hand. In the middle of each rectangular make 2 more parallel cuts (see image above). Fry in hot oil.